Getting Started with Engage

This guide walks you from "I just enabled Engage" to "I have a live campaign and a Welcome Series running" in under 30 minutes.

Step 1 - Open the Engage Dashboard

Navigate to Dashboard > Engage. You will land on the overview page, which shows KPI tiles plus a getting-started checklist that tracks your progress through the items below.

The top-level tabs are:

• Overview - KPIs and checklist
• Segments - Audience builder
• Campaigns - One-time and recurring sends
• Journeys - Multi-step drips
• Templates - Levy Recommended library plus your own
• Analytics - Campaign and journey funnels
• Settings - Sender domains, default UTM tags, rate-limit overrides

Step 2 - Confirm Sender Identity

Engage sends from a Levy-managed domain by default (*.levyride.com), which works out of the box. If you want emails to come from your own domain, set that up now so it has time to propagate.

1. Go to Engage > Settings > Sender Domains.
2. Click Add Domain and enter your sending domain (e.g., rides.yourbrand.com).
3. Engage provisions a Postmark Sender Signature and shows you the DNS records to add at your registrar.
4. Add the DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records.
5. Click Verify DNS. Verification usually takes 5-30 minutes for DNS to propagate.

For a deeper walkthrough see Sender Domain Setup. If you skip this step, sends still work - they just go through the Levy-managed domain.

Step 3 - Seed the Levy Recommended Templates

Engage ships with 19 pre-built templates that cover every common lifecycle moment. They are not loaded automatically - you opt in once.

1. Go to Engage > Templates.
2. Click the Levy Recommended tab.
3. If the tab is empty, click Seed Templates (the call to action shows on first visit).

The seed is idempotent. Running it again will not duplicate templates. See Pre-Built Templates for the full inventory.

Step 4 - Set Default UTM Tags

Default UTM tags get appended to every link in every Engage email so your downstream analytics (GA4, Vercel Analytics, etc.) attribute traffic correctly.

1. Go to Engage > Settings > Defaults.
2. Set:
   • utm_source (e.g., engage)
   • utm_medium (e.g., email for email-only, leave blank to use channel)
   • utm_campaign is left blank here - it gets filled per campaign

You can override these per campaign at send time.

Step 5 - Build Your First Segment

Start with something safe and easy to count, like "active in the last 30 days."

1. Go to Engage > Segments > New Segment.
2. Name it Active 30d.
3. Add a rule: Rides > Last ride at > within last > 30 days.
4. Click Preview. The live count appears, cached for 60 seconds.
5. Click Save.

See Audience Segments for the full attribute reference.

Step 6 - Send Your First Campaign

A dry run is the safest way to confirm everything works without actually sending.

1. Go to Engage > Campaigns > New Campaign.
2. Name it Hello from Engage.
3. Channel: Email.
4. Audience: select the Active 30d segment you just made.
5. Template: clone any Levy Recommended template into your library, then assign it here.
6. Click Dry Run. The dispatcher walks through the pipeline without actually calling Postmark, and you see exactly how many sends would happen, how many would be suppressed, and which variables would resolve.
7. Review, then click Send.

See Campaign Builder for the full composer walkthrough.

Step 7 - Turn On the Welcome Series

The Welcome Series is the highest-leverage journey to run first - every new signup gets a polished onboarding sequence with zero ongoing work.

1. Go to Engage > Journeys > New Journey > Welcome Series preset.
2. The preset loads three sends (welcome intro, how-to-ride after 48h, first-ride promo after 72h with a branch that exits if they already rode).
3. Confirm the templates match what you cloned in Step 3.
4. Click Publish.

Once published, every new customer with marketing_email_consent = true enters the journey on signup. See Journey Builder for branches, waits, and goals.

Step 8 - Wire Up the Preference Center Link

Riders need a way to manage their preferences. Engage gives every rider a unique unsubscribe / preference token that resolves to a per-subaccount branded page.

The token URL is included automatically in every pre-built email footer as {{unsubscribe.url}}. If you build custom templates, include that variable in the footer or your sends will fail CAN-SPAM validation at publish time.

See Preference Center for the rider-facing experience.

Step 9 - Verify the Crons Are Running

Engage relies on four scheduled jobs:

These are wired into vercel.json at the platform level - you do not configure them. If a campaign appears stuck in queued status for more than 5 minutes, see Troubleshooting.

What to Do Next

• Build more segments. Try Lapsed 60d, Low balance (no auto top-up), Top 10% by ride count.
• Add A/B variants to your next campaign. See A/B Testing.
• Review the suppression list. Anyone who hard-bounced, complained, or unsubscribed is here. See Suppression List.
• Localize templates. Engage falls back to English if a language variant is missing - add Spanish, German, French, or Portuguese variants for any rider base you have outside the US.

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